Flicker
by Lux Harte
Summary: After the war, nothing goes as expected.
1. Chapter 1

Aang seems happy enough, but Katara cannot imagine why. She stares out at the ocean, standing on the dusky beach, angry and itchily so, as if her fury is an uncomfortably tight coat she can't pull off, heating her chest and neck and confining her lungs. Her breathing is harsh and labored in this heat- the tropical humidity of this island, so lovely those first weeks, is getting to her, and she would trade anything to be in the South Pole right now.

"Katara?" she hears, and she whirls to snap at him, her feet carving angry little valleys in the sand. He has snuck up on her, this boy with whom she thought she was in love.

"What, Aang? Are you finished being all high-and-mighty and pretending you know best?" His eyes widen and his mouth hangs open with hurt, and some part of her hurts too, but a stronger part is filled with pent-up vitriol and another, much smaller part feels a perverse pleasure in hurting him for a moment. "Get over yourself, Aang, you're thirteen. You don't always know best. You're just a kid." This is a stab and she knows it, and enjoys it, and wants to twist the knife a little, because he deserves it, after the way these past months went.

But instead his grey eyes- pretty eyes, eyes she once idly thought would look nice next to the dark hair she will pass on to her children- go sober and droop a little, and his mouth closes, and behind the infuriating maturity that usually pleases her when it appears is a hint of a wound. A hint isn't enough for her, but before she gets out another word, he speaks.

"Katara, you're not being fair," and it is a statement of fact, not an entreaty, not a persuasion, and immediately she opens her mouth to speak but he continues. "I'm the Avatar. I'm not just Aang, and I can't be. I have a responsibility to the world. You know that." She does know it, but he can't be the mature one of the two of them, not in this fight and not ever, not when he is two years younger than her (and let's be honest: she is just a kid as well) and kissing him in public makes her self-conscious (like she is a pedophile or something!) "And I know I can't always be right and I don't know best. But it's important that I do my best to keep the peace." And dammit, he is still talking. How dare he be right? How dare he be so superior? "I mean, it's on my shoulders, Katara-"

"Shut up," Katara snarls finally, and storms past him, because he is right and for a moment she hates him for it. She does not get very far before she remembers the letter from Sokka that arrived earlier that day (her brother needs her to visit Zuko in her capacity as diplomat) and turns to spit curt words back at Aang, confused, upset, dear, hated Aang. "I'm leaving tomorrow. For the Fire Nation. Sokka needs something from Zuko and he can't send anyone else." Even now, Aang keeps talking.

"Why don't you just write to Zuko?" he suggests, utterly earnest and trying to help her even after she snapped so cruelly, and this goodness of his infuriates her even more. "I mean, he'll give you what you need. He wants the world peaceful and happy just like we do-"

Her words, barbed and angry and only half-true, come through a clenched jaw. "It's a complicated manner. And that isn't the way diplomacy works. It's not something you could understand." With that she turns from him and walks away.

Katara finds herself packing her things violently, shoving them into her bag, with no memory of her walk back to their inn (the powers-that-be of the island had arranged for the two teenagers to stay in separate rooms; the discovery of this relieved Katara immensely upon their arrival.) As she packs she comes across Sokka's letter and skims over once again- she has already read it a good three times and is still not entirely certain why he did not just write to Zuko, as Aang had suggested merely half an hour ago.

Sokka wants her to ask Zuko for warships and firebenders; that much is clear. Pirates have been taking advantage of the chaos caused by the war for as long as it has gone on, raiding and plundering in both the south and the north, and Sokka has decided it is finally time to address the issue. But the request is modest, and in a time of relative peace- if not particularly organized peace- their friend the Fire Lord can certainly afford to loan them a few ships and soldiers. Besides (and she hates that this thought even crosses her mind) Aang was right before: Zuko will certainly give what is needed, because he wants the piracy under control as much as Sokka does.

All told it is not a matter that requires formal diplomacy (yet Sokka has made it clear that that is what he expects- the letter ends with an admonishment to "bring something nice" because she will need it) and Katara doesn't understand. She puzzles over this for a while, lounged on her bed and examining the pale green ceiling, but finally she just accepts it, because she wants to get off this island and doesn't particularly care about the pretext. It will be nice to see Zuko; his serious-eyed commitment to his serious position tickles her, and they haven't spoken in months, as she and Aang left just a few weeks after Zuko's coronation. Then it strikes her that if there is a free moment (and she doubts there will be) she can talk to him about Aang; whether he has advice for her or not (and she doubts he will) it will be comforting to talk to someone (and of this she has no doubt.) Katara smiles and closes her eyes, stretching her arms above her head.

A knock on the door breaks her out of her reverie, and she knows without a thought that it is Aang. There is a moment of silence in which her cheeks flush and her eyes flash open and her body tenses and her heart jumps, a moment of guilt and shame and tenderness and the pressure of a decision, and then she hears the knock again. Another moment. Then-

"Katara?" She knows now it is too late; she knows that had she intended to answer she would have after the first knock, and so she lets out a breath and curls up on her side, closing her eyes again and forcing her body to relax. Her heart sounds like a drumbeat, but she cannot help that, and the more she worries the faster, louder, harder it goes. The door isn't locked, and he is clearly here to check on her, so- yes, there it is behind her, the door clicking and Aang's gentle footsteps. Katara keeps her eyes closed gently, her breathing regular, and it is fortunate she is focusing so seriously, because Aang leans over to stroke her arm and kiss her neck and whisper into her hair ("I love you, Katara," and her heart nearly breaks) while her heartbeat pounds in her ears and she barely manages to keep control. He caresses her cheek, once, and then leaves, closing the door carefully behind him. Katara rolls over onto her back, staring at the ceiling, and lies there for a long, long time before she manages to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Azula's hair grows out raggedly, for though Zuko does pity her in a distant sort of way, he refuses to let anyone take scissors into her cell. Cell is a harsh word, yes, and, no, she is not in a prison, she is merely in a psychiatric treatment ward that happens to be connected to a prison. This means that unlike the war criminals and traitors and murderers in close (if unknown) proximity, she is well fed and well taken care of: she has a bed instead of just a floor; she has her own private bathroom; her clothes are clean and well-fitted, if unadorned. She has no window, for the most obvious of reasons, and she has no books, for the simplest of reasons, but aside from these deprivations her "residence" is very comfortable.

Despite these luxuries afforded to his sister Zuko is uncomfortably aware that "psychiatric treatment ward" means "insane asylum" and that "insane asylum" may as well mean "prison." Not that he would object to placing her in prison. In all honesty he would probably prefer it that way, the way it should have been. If she were sane, and locked up tightly for fear of escape and treason and a threat to his throne, he could be wary of her; their relationship would be normal. (This is not the problem and he knows it.) What it really comes down to is this: if she were sane, he could hate her without hating himself. As things are now, she has been reduced, pieces of her pared away until there is hardly anything left, and what is left is not pleasant, not that she has ever been pleasant. The insanity is so undignified, and that is what bothers him, niggling at his conscience. She is no longer Princess Azula, his plotting and manipulative and violent and sociopathic sister and the heir presumptive; she is simply Azula, a prisoner/patient who manages few coherent words on her best days and is inclined to bite anyone who enters her cell, if she does not burst out in giggles first. She is no longer what he hated, and he knows, on some level, that it is wrong to hate her broken, left-behind shell of a psyche, and yet upon the sight of her he cannot force himself past his enmity.

Guilty, and then resentful of her, for making him feel these things, he visits her occasionally. (By occasionally of course he means no less than thrice a month, and often much more than that. It is far more often than he visits his father.) Visiting Azula goes one of two ways. Either he sits outside her cell, back against the door, listening to her frenzied shrieks and vile laughter and, depending on the time of day, her utter silence (they drug their patients well, these people here, and for her they focus primarily on dampening her energies at midday, when her firebending would be strongest if she could think to firebend), or he goes in.

On those days, few and far between, she never, ever recognizes him.

Often, she does not even see him, and then for a moment it is easier; after that moment he hates himself for thinking such a thing, for thinking cruel thoughts towards a helpless patient who is not, he reminds himself, his sister, but is- he cannot help but feel- his responsibility.

When she does see him, her reaction depends on her mood. Sometimes she snarls and tries to bite him (sometimes he lets her, thinking perhaps it will assuage his guilt) and sometimes she giggles and plays with his hair, and it takes all his self-restraint to keep himself from smashing her skull against the metal door, because this is not his sister and he hardly knows what else to do.

Once, he brings Mai with him, and that is a mistake. She is supportive- of course she is supportive, in her own way- but she doesn't understand his dilemma. No one else would catch it, but he sees the involuntary hint of a smirk in the corner of her mouth when she first sees Azula, giggling mindlessly, her hair lank and long and unkempt, thin and bony and barely-there. The bile rises up in his throat and Zuko nearly succumbs to an urge to end it, right there, break up with her for good this time, but he doesn't.

After that things are different between them. He is merely going through the motions as he becomes more and more disenchanted with her, and his antipathy grows daily, and he thinks she doesn't notice. He hopes Mai doesn't notice, because he doesn't want to hurt her (but that is not the truth, he hopes she does notice, so she will break up with him and he won't have to do it himself.)

He wants to talk to Aang about all of this, because he is sure the Avatar will be understanding and helpful, in true airbender fashion, but Aang is far away, on a distant island, mediating a dramatic dispute, and Zuko realizes he doesn't want to talk to Aang anyway. Aang would simply urge him to let go of his hatred of Azula (far easier said than done), tell him to talk things over with Mai, and go off on his merry idealistic way. Idealism is all well and good, and Zuko envies Aang his unwavering certainty when it comes to morality, but Zuko is the Fire Lord and he lives in the real world, where every decision has advantages and disadvantages and he never quite knows what the effect will be anyway, where every position he takes alienates and inspires hatred from someone, where he must use the proper channels and handle the bureaucrats and negotiate with the diplomats and can never, ever say what he is truly thinking. Zuko never gets to swoop in, end a crisis, and swoop back out, leaving the inglorious aftermath and reorganization to someone else. He is the someone else.

Being Fire Lord is not at all what he once imagined, all war councils and parades. It is unglamorous, and it is unpleasant, and it is his job. There is no one else in the world to do it, and that only intensifies his worry and his undirected anger.

Aang is not the person to talk to, and Zuko doesn't know who is. He considers Iroh, but only briefly; he does not want his uncle to worry. Let him enjoy his retirement- he deserves it. This decision leaves Zuko uncertain: if he cannot talk to Aang, and he cannot talk to Iroh, he is left with essentially no options. He does not exactly have many close friends (being Fire Lord is a rather overwhelming demand on his time and attention.) He thinks Katara would be helpful- he knows she understands the disparities of knowing what is right while feeling overwhelmingly that it isn't- or even her brother or Toph in a pinch, but he hasn't seen any of them in weeks. The Fire Nation isn't the only one that needs attention. Sokka, Zuko knows, is busy rebuilding the Southern Water Tribe and making sure the North and the South remain connected; Toph has opened a school of metalbending; Katara is, Zuko imagines, with Aang, on an island in the Earth Kingdom. Technically, she is a Water diplomat (though that is an honorary appointment meant only to raise her above peasantry and allow her to travel comfortably) and has no place in an internal Earth conflict; as she is the Avatar's girlfriend (how bizarre that sounds), however, he imagines no one quite minds.

A knock on the door pulls Zuko out of his musings, and he rises from his chair. "Come in," he calls out, a hint of weariness in his voice, as he turns to face the door. The door opens and a servant, dressed in fiery crimson, kneels before Zuko, presenting him with a missive. Zuko thanks the man absently and unfolds the rich, smooth paper, and after a moment he smiles at the news: an envoy from the Water Tribe is due within the week.


End file.
